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Marvel Announces Six Exclusive Retailer Variants For February

Published Fri, 07 Dec 2018 13:00:51 -0600

Every month, Marvel offers retailers the chance to commission exclusive covers for certain titles — as long as they order thousands of copies. It's an effective, if expensive way for both parties to a) get some promotion and create collectables for the market, and b) up their orders. Begun by Dreamwave back in the day, it was popularised by IDW and now Marvel Comics does it more than anyone else with anywhere between five and 10 titles a month.

In recent months, Marvel Comics has been upping the amount of retailer variant covers they offer. Twelve for October, eight for November, eleven for December, twelve for January, and it's still very unclear how many of these actually get taken up.

Take November's eight offerings. Uncanny X-Men #1 definitely got a batch from J Scott Campbell's own store, as well as ComicXposure, Frankie's Comics, Unknown Comics and ComicSketchArt and Carnage Born #1 got them from Midtown Comics and Comic Mint.

But I can't find anything for Black Order #1 or Marvel Knights 20th #1, Fantastic Four #4, Ironheart #1, Dead Man Logan #1 or even Avengers #700.

I may have missed some. But even when retailers pick these up, they do very few in total, as opposed to DC Comics who offer one variant opportunity every two or three months and get inundated.

But these are the eight titles available in February – if you see the benefit of zigging while others zag..